David Dowker
NOTES FOR GREEN LAKE
"The message was the world translated,
and speaker and listener became one."
(Michael Palmer - Notes for Echo Lake)
Words go up in smoke and so occur
as only almost avatars of those omens shaken out of trees
suddenly becoming more than the sum of their flows.
And I as is. It goes without saying. I was the lake against
the shore(d) and a voice that echoed across the waves,
and I is that carrier of water.
While young summer may have no choice and multiplies,
as some things are more than they seem:
a seed, a thread, a drum -
coriander, honeycomb,
lyre -
syntax and silence.
Or the syntax of silence. Noticing the coincident tuning
of various objects. The articulate resonance of this passage
of years as if the mere facts mirrored murmur meaning
-fully. The body of the text (entity) revealed as another
veiled reference to itself. The angels of incidence of light
filtered through the leaves. My thoughts just wanted to be
scattered photons of that radiance.
Some things are less than comprehensible.
The ringing in my ears throughout the day. The telephone
next morning and then. The silence which follows. He was
a shrunken mask of himself. A sprig of cedar, plain apron
and gone. The absurd machinery of that descent.
The ringing of the telephone sheared that silence and the plain
mask of mourning followed. A spring from that declension.
Winter in the cryptosphere.
The letters in the reeds. Knee and elbow glyphs, the _Y_ of
thighs. What he had seen with his own eyes, rising and falling.
The conversation never ends. Composition is driven by
the pistons of our arms and legs, spelled by lines of flight.
The correspondence of the letters of our exchange with the S-
curve of the returning. In the living room he dreamt the door
to the hallway being methodically removed from its hinges.
They are standing outside. They are drunk with the powers
of light.
Linguum of the world. Tiny white jasmine beside the muted
fire of the flowering maple and the casually painted blue
hydrangea. Passion flowers strangely
artificial, as if made by some obsessive
hand. Oleander and datura, assorted orchids
and staghorn fern.
Eyes to see and ears to hear and light-foot it along
these neuropaths. In the film Orphée he transcribes
messages from the (underground) radio.
The lake's green explains what light cannot entirely
represent, a thought-blot, toxins, the bomb (population,
data or other) or Marilyn Monroe, a "box of rain" in
an air-plane, the flat cut of the sapphire she removed from
her swollen finger. The co-conspirators examine the text
and ponder her image in the para-tarot. A cochineal rattle
in the background. Ochre over amber, blood-type ruby
in translation.
The examiners of the text cough in unison and click on
another card. Here as everywhere her image replicates
itself.
Truth to be told the inventors of the alphabet were many
and did not necessarily work as a team. Here as nowhere
else I am reminded.
Today is a transparent day of smooth talk and trapezoids
and red meaning whet(ted) and the stone as a verb,
double-edged, incised with luminous numerals, the spider
who taught me to write, the yes and no of the code,
the spider who forgot how to read, the delicate shell
of her ear, a barking frog, the mystery of mysteries.
Does biology know humanity by name?
In claw and tooth removed. The numinous indifference of
nature. Stick figures flicker across the screen.
Pluto warned us of the time-bomb in the ticking and the loose
thread wound around his finger. Remember Los Alamos.
It's a sirius business.
The inventor of the letter _A_ sees each colour of its saying.
The lake is read as concentric circles of ripples and where we are
coming from remains under water. "Possibly Maybe" was the song.
Here they sing in tongues or hum along.